After a Christmas day alone, made music in the Sonic Sandbox. If you listen to the end, you can hear footsteps coming down the stairs, all alone.

Winter 2018

Christmas Alone

"Journey through nine vistas" starts with long tones and travels through nine different spacious and evocative "scapes," perhaps in space, or the prairie, or who knows where!

"Icebergs" just has to be listened to! It's impossible to know where this came from or how we got there through improvisation, but the chemistry between these musicians is something special.

Emergence

Journey Through Nine Vistas

Majestic horns evoking a sea journey past icebergs.
A Fun Drazers improvisation.

Icebergs

Improvisation for French Horn, Sax and Flugelhorn that traveled across nine different vistas.

Ed on drums, Hugh on Sax and frog, David on Rav Vast

Fun Drazers

Tryptych in Five

After a big thunderstorm blew through, this was the last improv interaction we had on Tuesday, May 28, 2019. Left us all feeling replete.

May 28, 2019

After the Rain

Flugelhorn, Sax, Dunbek and Analog Synth in conversation. Sonic Sandbox creates spontaneous compositions in the moment. Sparx is like the millions of little roses blooming for a second in June.

Experiments

Sparx

Three improvisations over two weeks. One is sadness made happy, and two are pretty meditative and trancelike.

June 11,2019

Sonic Oud Processor

June 11, 2019

Mecropsonism

June 4, 2019

Always Be Crying (Trying)

Sonic Sandbox is a performance collective that uses a variety of musical games – the same ones used in the workshop – to create a performance in front of a live audience. The core members of Sonic Sandbox have all been working together for more than a year to develop their skills to a level where they feel comfortable sharing with friends (both old and brand new) in a performance setting. 

We’re amateurs and we make amateur recordings. If you want to hear a perfect mix, you don’t want to listen to our recordings. We record improvisation live, and improvisation is full of things that, if you expect perfection, you won’t like. We make a lot of mistakes. We start and stop unexpectedly. We aren’t in perfect tune. We don’t always catch onto what the others are doing. Sometimes we get lost in what we are doing and forget to keep on listening to the others.

To enjoy our music, it helps to listen to it in the spirit in which we make it. We are practicing appreciation for every sound we make. We look for a way to like what we do, instead of trying to find a way to tear it down or criticize it. We make music from whatever we bring to the evening. Sometimes we might be depressed or angry or tired or uninspired. It’s all there. It’s all an accurate reflection of our respective moods and skills.

So it is best to listen for the feeling behind the music. Like falling asleep listening to the band stay up into the wee hours, jamming and drinking. Things get a bit out of control, musically speaking, but at the same time, they get a bit more raw and authentic. If you listen for the authenticity, you will enjoy our music a lot better than if you listen with the idea of comparing us to everyone else you have heard.

Sonic Sandbox

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